The judge sentencing Ryan Batt’s killer Timon Douglin on Friday admitted that the three year and three month sentence passed may be seen as ‘inadequate’.

19-year-old Douglin escaped with what has been blasted as a light sentence due to the guidelines that bound judge John Reddihough by law.

The teen, of Upper Meadow Road in Whitley, admitted driving the silver Vauxhall Astra that hit 28-year-old Whitley man Ryan Batt when he was walking along the pavement on Shinfield Road in the early hours of Sunday June 1 last year.

Douglin denied knowing that he had hit the popular son, brother and fiancé claiming he had got out of the car and picked up the damaged bumper panicking because he was not supposed to have taken the car and drove off without realising Mr Batt was dying in the garden of 156 Shinfield Road.

But Judge Reddihough dismissed the claim at Reading Crown Court on Friday saying there was no way he would not have known he had hit the victim when evidence proved Mr Batt's head hit the windscreen in front of the driver of the car before he was propelled into the garden.

Mr Batt had been walking to his home in Pevensey Court, Newstead Rise, which he shared with his fiancee Nichola Herbert, after celebrating a friend’s stag night in town.

Witnesses who had heard a ‘muffled crash sound’ saw Douglin hastily pick up the bits of the hire car he had taken without permission before driving off to Downham Court, half a mile down the road, where he was seen to inspect the damage caused by the impact with Mr Batt, take his personal belongings out of the car, remove the back number plate and then leave the scene.

He handed himself into the police station 12 hours after the crash telling police officers he had seen on the internet that someone had been hurt and he wanted to report a collision in the same place, at the same time.

Judge Reddihough said: “You knew that you struck him. It was obvious to you that you had struck someone and that you then concealed some of the evidence of damage to the car and left the scene.”

“It is often said that the value of someone’s life lost in a tragic accident like this can never be measured in terms of the level of a prison sentence.

“It may be whatever sentence that this or another court could pass would be termed inadequate in respect of the life that was lost.

“I have to pass a sentence in regard to the law and the guidelines that are laid down for me.”

The families and friends of both Ryan Batt and Timon Douglin were in court to hear the sentence.